All These Perfect Strangers (29 page)

I walked along the corridor, the space only wide enough for one. The floor sagged underneath my weight. Bedrooms ran along the right-hand side. All empty now, I was sure of it. Halfway down the corridor, there was the outline of a piece of paper stuck to a door. I could see it had been ripped out of a notebook, one edge ragged with perforation. The words ‘Nico – Keep Out' were just legible in the gloom. It reminded me of the notes he had been carrying, two or three sheets with lots of words scrawled on them. Sergeant Durham didn't have them when he came back inside. Maybe Nico had taken them back? Maybe Nico had left them in his room? Maybe I could read them and see if Nico really knew anything about what was going on.

I tapped lightly on the door. It swung open. The room was twilight in comparison to the darkness of the corridor. Light and an icy breeze came from outside through a cracked window.

‘Hello,' I said again.

Still no reply.

Perhaps Nico had never come back this afternoon and his Marchmain friend had lied to a girl he thought was a rich college kid. He was probably laughing into his dinner right now, or perhaps, he was going to creep up in the darkness and jump out at me. The thought of that made my skin prickle and I switched on the torch as I peered behind me. But he was back in the kitchen, burning his onions. I was alone.

I turned back to the room. Something white was crumpled on the floor. It was Nico's jacket. He must have come home after talking to the police. I couldn't see any pieces of paper lying around but I wanted to be sure. Swallowing, I stepped into the room.

My torch caught a photograph stuck to the opposite wall. I stumbled forward to get closer. It was of Nico with his arms around Alice, how they were before the attack. Alice was looking directly towards me, laughing, beautiful, her eyes narrowed in good humour. Nico was looking at her. Wearing his stupid white suit, his blonde hair curled around his head. He was almost unrecognisable.

I was too focused on the picture to realise he was there behind me. It was the smell I noticed. Behind the door, caught in the shadows, he was lying on a filthy blanket. A small plastic bag and needle were beside him, a spoon and lighter discarded next to the mattress.

I knelt down next to him. A trickle of brown trailed from his mouth. I didn't want to touch him so I put my hand just under his nose, hoping for the slightest movement of warm air on my fingers as I watched his chest. Nothing. My hand began to shake and I accidentally touched his lips. A kiss from a corpse. It felt like a stain on my skin.

It's been raining for three days, ever since Terry left. Gentle drops from grey skies giving way to biblical amounts of water gushing down. It is still falling this morning.

Mum is in her dressing gown, listening to the radio in the kitchen. She's on day shift this week so she should have already left for work, but she's banking on the road to the Cannery getting washed out.

‘Last time the road was cut off for two days,' she tells me. ‘Imagine getting stuck out there.'

‘Pack an emergency can opener and you wouldn't starve,' I say.

‘I'd get pretty sick of tinned asparagus,' she snorts.

She has taken the Terry break-up better than I expected. Michelle from work is already trying to set her up with someone.

The radio announcer comes on with the list of today's cancellations and closures. He can't decide if this should be in his usual cheesy manner or something more serious. In the end he goes for the latter and reads it out as if he is compering a funeral. The road to the Cannery has been shut since daybreak. Mum looks relieved.

‘Lucky, they don't run a nightshift until corn starts,' she says. Then on reflection, ‘But think of the overtime,' and, ‘I should see if they'll let you work during the corn season. Casual on nightshift, that's good money. Could save up and the two of us go away on a cruise or something. Wouldn't that be nice, a mother-daughter holiday?'

I ignore her because that would be my worst nightmare and I won't be here anyway.

All roads out of here have been cut off.

We are an island.

Mum keeps smiling until she remembers that the nursing home is across from the school and nearer the river.

‘They won't evacuate it, will they?' she asks me. ‘Make us take Dad back for a bit?' She is debating whether to phone them or not but just decides that no news is good news when the phone rings.

‘You answer it,' she says. ‘If it's the home, tell them I'm stuck at the factory. They'd never make you come and pick up your grandfather even if the water was up to their necks.'

Tracey's cousin runs the nursing home. I am banned from entering.

Walking to the phone, I pull a face, which Mum misses because she is heaping sugar into her cup of tea.

She yells from the kitchen, ‘If it's someone called Kevin, you're my younger sister.'

But it's not Michelle's cousin's best friend who's getting divorced but has a great sense of humour. It's Ivy. Frank wants to see me.

‘Frank has availability tomorrow,' she says.

I wonder why. Ivy always claims that Frank is booked out months in advance.

‘If it's so urgent I can do today,' I say, curiously.

‘He's assisting with the relief effort today,' says Ivy, in a voice that implies I should know that already.

I wonder what assistance Frank is giving. Perhaps counselling all the idiots who forgot they bought a house on a plain that floods every couple of years, but will remember the story of two girls killing a policeman and how one of them got away with it, for the rest of their lives.

‘Tomorrow, eleven a.m.'

‘All right.'

I'm curious, but I would sooner rip out my tongue than ask her why. Anyway, that works for me. I've decided I should at least say goodbye to Frank, I owe him that much. As soon as the highway reopens, I'm leaving. The university made an offer the day after I bought my suit.

I walk back into the kitchen and tell Mum it was only Ivy, but she shushes me so she can keep listening to the radio. Sipping her tea, she is packing bits and pieces into a cardboard box. The remnants of Terry.

‘Another festival ruined. Won't be a single blossom left in the district after this rain,' she says, when the next song is played. ‘Races cancelled and the peak hasn't come yet. Those poor buggers on Pye Street already have it lapping over their doormats.'

She tries to look sympathetic but we both know she is enjoying it. Usually disasters involve us. This time we are high and dry.

‘Already gone over the last one. If the rain stays this heavy overnight, might get as high as 1923 and then the levees will be breached and all bets will be off. Your grandfather knew what he was doing when he bought on a hill. Crafty old bugger.'

She walks out of the kitchen, my slippers on her shuffling feet. I peek inside the box to see if there is anything worth pinching: a Grateful Dead cassette, a pair of grubby thongs and a well-thumbed paperback of
The Kama Sutra
, which makes me feel ill. Mum is back before I can go through it all properly. She's holding some LPs, a couple of t-shirts and a toothbrush.

‘Might want to make yourself scarce this morning,' she says.

I look out the window at the pelting rain and ask why. I had planned to spend the day in bed.

‘Terry is coming over to pick up the last of his stuff.'

‘Is he still here?'

‘Staying out at Mick's,' she says with a shrug, like what does she care, but she immediately goes to her handbag, searching for her nicotine gum. ‘He'll head off when the road reopens, I guess, to whatever is so important up north.' Bitterness flavours her voice.

‘How's he getting in to town?'

‘Lyall Bridge hasn't closed yet. I told him that if he doesn't pick up his crap this morning, it will be on the front lawn by midday, rain or no rain.'

Terry's going has been easier than I thought but still I don't want to push my luck. I leave Mum flinging a bunch of his clothes out of her wardrobe onto an untidy heap on the floor.

Outside, the world is blurred and softened except for the rain, which is needle-sharp. At the end of our street you can follow the road all the way down to the river. There is a thin glaze of water over the black tar. But I want to go higher, to take one last look at the town. It's been on my mind since Frank mentioned it, so I decide to go up The Hill.

I haven't been to the top of The Hill since that night. There's a road that leads straight up to it, but I don't want to go that way. Too close to the cemetery. Instead, I go around the golf course, past the last lot of houses on the edge of town and then up the dirt track that cuts The Hill straight up the middle, like a centre part. The cutting is supposed to be used only during bush-fire season, but I jump the locked gate.

Climbing is hard work. I'm wearing Mum's gumboots which barely have any tread. The track is slick with mud, and I have to stop several times, just to breathe and question my sanity.

On a clear day, you can see the entire town sprawling through the valley, from the saleyards in the south to the fibro government housing in the north, and then the open plains stretching up to the mountains on the horizon.

When I get to the top, half-drowned, legs heavy, I sit down on a bench and see the damage. No mountains today, the clouds hang too low, but the rain is easing and I can still see the town. The river surges so fast that there are patches of white foam on top of it like the sea. The brown water has burst its banks in places and leaked across the fields below me. Trees have fallen and the town is cut in two. I wonder if Terry has made it across.

I can just make out the activity around the edge of town. The school hall has been opened as a relief centre. It was supposed to be the Welcome Parade today with bunches of kids dressed in crepe paper over their t-shirts and shorts to represent blossom season, the high school brass band playing out of tune and the local dance academy putting on the entertainment. Instead, everyone is wet and making sandbags or cups of tea.

Rain begins to pelt down again as I cross the road to the car park and the reserve up the top. The ground is swollen with water. It seeps out with every step. I want to find the place where Tracey lit the fire that night. She made me pick up twigs in the dark while she got it started with a pile of dried grass and paper. The fire was how he found us. There was always a police car at the bottom of The Hill to catch the joy-riders and drunks, to issue speeding tickets or to offer rides to underage girls.

‘
We've got to head back,' I said. ‘Mum's expecting us.' A lie because Mum was watching TV, thinking we were tucked up in our beds.

‘C'mon, I won't be long. You keep the fire going.' She got into his car, the red and blue twinkling above the dash like lights on a Christmas tree, the only unmarked police car in town. Tracey's face was visible through the window. A wave goodbye. The wheels spun on dirt which flew up and stung my face. At the crest of The Hill, I watched the backlights drop down through the sharp turns and then disappear behind the trees. I heard the sound of braking and I waited, looking for where the road turned again to see the car tracing the curve, taking her for a ride around The Hill's circuit just for fun, but the car never reappeared. Accidents were notorious on that stretch. Usually tourists who didn't pay attention to the tight corners, but anyone can hit a tree, especially at night. I stood there, waiting. Silence. Maybe I had missed them. But still no lights.

I waited for what seemed ages but I kept telling myself that time plays tricks in the dark. Coming up here had been Tracey's idea and now she'd got a better offer and probably wasn't coming back. I had to get home by myself. I put out the fire that Tracey had made. That would show her. Puffs of ash rose as the embers gave a dying gasp. I stamped down hard, suffocating it of air. The cutting was too dark to walk alone, so I decided to follow the road.

The car had pulled into an old track, still high up on The Hill, before houses got too close. An isolated spot. You couldn't see it from the road because he had turned off all his lights. It was the crackle of the police radio I heard. He was supposed to be on duty.

I didn't understand why it was there. They were only supposed to have gone for a quick spin. He was going to let Tracey drive for a bit. I thought I should check to make sure they were all right and then yell at Tracey for leaving me. The car had both right doors open, and I could see some movement. He was speaking as well, but I couldn't make out the words over the radio.

I walked towards the car, uncertain.

Tracey's arms were caught above her head and handcuffed to the door handle. He was lying on top of her, squashing her. She lay there naked, a broken doll, with his large hairy hand pressing her neck, a blank look on her face.

As I stood there, she looked at me. I found a rock at my feet and held it up in my hand. She shook her head with the barest movement and then moved it to the right, turned back, looked at me and repeated the motion. On the front seat of the car was his gun and holster. As I crept towards it, he was already turning, sensing my presence. In his haste he smacked his head into the roof and stumbled forward, falling out of the car. Standing there, pulling his trousers back on, he looked at the gun in my hand.

‘Now, give that to me. You don't want anyone to get hurt.' He was back to being the nice policeman who did the stranger danger talk for primary schools. But I looked at Tracey naked in the car, red blotches across her body where he had been hitting her, and I took a step away from him and held the gun tighter.

He followed my gaze.

‘OK, OK, I've got the keys. Only a bit of fun. Tell her, Tracey.'

My mind was speeding up like it was on fast forward. Mum's boyfriend Shane with his guns, Tracey taking me rabbiting. I'd used a shotgun before but this was different. I held the revolver in front of me with one hand and braced my wrist with the other, just like television. A flash of red rage overwhelmed me as I thought of all the dickheads my mother had brought home. Dickheads like him.